


Every Chance We Had

by IraDeu



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multiple Timelines, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, Suicide, The opposite of a fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:07:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9344750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraDeu/pseuds/IraDeu
Summary: John doesn't really think he can say that he couldn't see what was coming, and he really can't say that he never had a chance to leave.A collection of every time Sherlock or John could have left each other, set to the tune of TS Eliot's The Waste Land.





	

**I. The Burial of the Dead**

  
Sherlock planned for every contingency, knew every spiderweb that fate could take, like little drops of dew, glinting.

He could avert death, just this once, could see his escape in his reflection in a drop of water. One miracle wasn't too much for him to ask, was it? He had killed the most brilliant criminal mind of his age. He was owed _something_ for that. And death was easy to outwit, compared to something alive and writhing. 

Snipers were predictable. Hired henchmen could be bought. These things were planned, plannable, and that was why Moriarty had used them and why Mycroft had dismantled them. This was just another game, and one that Sherlock knew how to play. 

What Sherlock did not plan for was gross incompetence, was someone not doing their job, was the world not catching up with him and being as clever as he wanted, needed it to be. His future, now, glittered like autumn leaves in sunlight, like fire.

He realized that he would die halfway down, when there was nothing there to catch him, when every plan had failed, and there was no way out, anymore.

He saw John, as he fell, and he wished he didn't.

His last thought was, "I'm sorry, John, for ruining you."

When he landed, his body became a red smear of entropy, and John got to watch all of the breath left in him spill out over the pavement, and John couldn't _think_ , and he pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

"That's - that's my friend. I know him. Please, let me-"

He is not ushered away. He gets to watch, to be there as the doctors try to find words to say when there is nothing left.

It ended up ruining him, but only a little, and he knows that that would have been the real insult to Sherlock - not being the world to someone, not having complete control. Not being known. Not being the most important, not being a supernova.

Well, if he wanted that, he shouldn't have died, then. In order to have an impact on death, you have to have had meaning when alive, more than just confusion and fear and undirected hope.

He gets married two years later, and his first son's name is William.

***

John never expected to live a long life. Longevity doesn't run in his blood. He's addicted to danger, associates fear with home and can't sleep unless he's scared, and alcoholism runs in his family, along with a bit of a penchant for violence. Even if he hadn't joined the military, he would've given himself forty years, tops. That way, every second over that feels like cheating death.

John is more okay with this than he thought he'd be, until he meets Sherlock. Then, time... _shifts_. Forty years is the blink of an eye, and a single moment of eye contact will last hours, repeat, twist, embed itself in John's skin like pencil lead or fractured bone.

Sherlock is like the stars, to him, something distant and beautiful and sparkling and noble, something cold, even as it is made out of fire. He's adrenaline purified, danger distilled. Living with him is like flirting with death.

Which is why John was so surprised to die in the way that he did. He expected something... more impressive. More grandiose. More *meaningful*. (Then again, this is death. No death is meaningful. All deaths are tragedies. All tragedies are worth tears. No tragedies are beautiful. The cycle continues.)

He dies when he is shot by a bank robber when he and Sherlock are on the way to apprehending a serial killer. Sherlock is many things, but he is not a doctor, and, even then, John is lucid enough to know that he couldn't be saved.

 _Tell him,_ a voice in his head says. _Tell him now. There's no time left to lie, and there's no point, anymore, in you trying to hide._

Sherlock's holding his body and panicking and trying so, so hard to convince John to stay alive, and John is trying his very, very hardest to do as he's told. Orders are nice. He knows what to do, and he just _can't_ , and he doesn't know how he'll explain this to Sherlock. He can't, anymore, and he's sorry.

And John decides to go with safe, because telling him now would ruin everything, no matter what.

His eyes close.

***

Mary does not leap in front of Sherlock, because that isn't possible. Physics itself has now deigned to conspire against the Holmses, and even the goddess of disguise can do nothing to stop the irreversible increase of entropy that occurs within Sherlock, the scattering of order.

He is shot between the eyes. His death is instant, and John watches it.

That was the first time John hit Mary. It was not the last.

***

 

Mike Stamford had been going through a rough time when John saw him; one of his children was dreadfully ill with some horrible disease, and Mike was talking about it nonstop to anyone that would listen.

John tried to be sympathetic. Tried.

He went home, washed his face. Looked at himself in the mirror, and realized that this was not going to get any easier.

Look at everyone else and all of their struggles, John. They're not going to slow down to help you, and you sure as hell can't save yourself.

He kills himself three months later. Gun to the temple, with blood spattering against the wall, like a Jackson Pollock painting, rebellion and chaos and cigarette butts and sadness.

Harry is devastated. No-one else is.

***

Sherlock, as it turned out, was not an expert in defusing bombs, and now he and John were staring at their own deaths, awaiting the beginning of the end of the world, for the fireball that would consume them whole, tigerlike.

Sherlock does not let the consequences of his failure stay in his mind, does not allow himself to think about what will happen to the terrorists, the country, his family, John's family. There is only one consequence that matters, and he is staring at your failure. You have brought him to his death.

Nothing to say, nothing to -

"Sherlock, can you..." The end of his question hangs in the air like a dead branch, or a spinning pair of shoes dangling off a rope. John still thinks that Sherlock can save them, because John still trusts him, after everything.

And then Sherlock does something entirely unexpected: he starts to cry.

He's trying to say something, but the words are falling out too fast: "I tried - I just - protect you - please-"

John does not know what to do, so he does nothing, until the nothing becomes something, until inaction becomes an act of deliberate cruelty. His world is being smashed with hammers, and he cannot save it all, but he can save something, someone.

Sherlock is kneeling on the floor, curled into a ball. The timer ticks down, down, down, and John doesn't look. There's not enough time to know how much they have left.

Their time has always been limited. This is just... finalization. The waxy red seal on it all, the final signature in full flourish.

John grabs Sherlock's hand, and Sherlock pulls himself up, face red and tear-streaked and so, so sorry.

John hugs him.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says, and he sounds so, so tired.

John doesn't let go, doesn't let himself. "I wouldn't have had my life any other way, Sherlock. You were... you were the best part."

There's a pause, and then Sherlock hugs him back, and John swears he can feel his pulse in his fingertips, racing even as the rest of him is still.

Sherlock breathes, in, out, in, speaks. "The price you paid-"

John cuts him off before Sherlock has time to finish thinking. "Was worth it."

And they are still. 

 

**II. A Game of Chess**

  
"Come with me," she said. "We fit. You won't be bored."

Sherlock knew what she was trying to do - she wanted another pawn in her game, to own, to keep, and Sherlock would look beautiful in her collection of wings, prismatic and violet and crushed at the center by one of her rusted-iron tacks, or maybe tied up in red ribbon, bound entirely willingly. The details don't matter and never did.

Sherlock knew how to play this. Sherlock knew how to survive a siege, how to push away the tug of something enticing that wanted to pull him away. Irene was just cocaine with a mouth, nothing more. An exercise in self-control. A stimulant.

But the brilliance of her game was that she only needed to win for a single instant, and then she had him. She could make a foothold within a single crack in Sherlock's resolve, and she would use it to climb inside his mind and never let go.

"You don't like it, here. You put up with it because you just don't know how to change."

His eyes shifted down, skirting the floor, dancing around lines in tile, glancing near exits. "Irene, please spare me your first-year psychology babble."

Yes, she thought. I'm close. 

"We can be free," she said. "We don't have to put up with the rest of the world, anymore. Not your brother, not your sister, not anyone. You can be _brilliant_ , Sherlock, with me."

"But-"

"He survived without you before, and he'll survive without you after. He'll change, for it. Adapt."

"I'm not something meant to be devoured and chewed and spat out and forgotten just so someone can grow." 

"But  _he_ is, isn't he?" 

And Sherlock believes it for a fraction of a fraction of an instant, and it's enough. Another butterfly for her collection. 

***

"You can't stay with him." Mycroft's face is crowned in shadows, and the room they're in is brushed concrete and steel and gilt and darkness. Mycroft is king, here, and Sherlock is a knight at best.

And no-one can resist the will of the king forever, no matter how brave.

"Mycroft, we  _just_  learned who Moriarty is. I can't - " Sherlock tries, of course, but he is uncertain, here. The stars do not thrive in blackness.

Mycroft's voice stays steady, flat, rehearsed, and Sherlock doesn't know how invested he is in Sherlock, but it's either far too little or far too much. "You need to. He's not safe. You'll destroy him. He'll destroy _you_. You know what-"

"I don't need to be lectured about _sentiment_ , Mycroft. John is _family._ " He tries to make it sting. Like an arrow, or a gauntlet thrown on a drawbridge. Take it. Bleed.

Mycroft pauses before he answers, like a cat toying with a mouse.

"Brother mine," Mycroft says, and Sherlock stops moving, stops pacing, just stops and stares at the ceiling, the sky, and tries to find a God he's not sure he believes in. Ever believed in.

Mycroft starts. "It would compromise your work." Read: You know he's not on your level. 

They've been through this before. "Damn my work." Read: I am not merely a pawn. 

"Do you really want to watch as your brain softens?" Read: Is this what you do when I take away your cocaine? You know how important this is. I am the entire British government, the entire world government, and you are choosing to throw it away for  _this?_ Unacceptable. 

If this is all he's got, then Sherlock's fine. Sherlock hears worse from himself every minute. "Mycroft, I-"

"Don't try to pretend that you're good for him."

That's when he wins, and Mycroft can see his brother's heart break, in that instant.

Mycroft never quite forgives himself for that.

***

Culverton breaks Sherlock, finds his pressure point and flicks at it and Sherlock shatters into a million shards of glass, like a kaleidoscope, like triangles, like a mirror that's been shot, like shattered ribs with no blood and air wheezing out of lungs through the holes.

Sherlock collapses inward, falls into his mind, and he is not safe there. Culverton has wound himself into Sherlock's psyche, and Sherlock cannot escape. His mind palace is now haunted, and real life is now filled with fear and self-loathing and a god made of pain and respite and begging in a cycle that will never end.

Culverton didn't need to even try.

Sherlock chugs an entire bottle of wine, then brings a razor to his arm.

His death takes ages, but at least he's free.

***

Sherlock is many things, but he is not a  _doormat._  

John hits him. 

Sherlock meets his eyes. 

"John," he says, full of malice and raw self-preservation, and John  _whimpers._

***

Moriarty smiled, because he knew he had him.

Look at this man - so repressed he's the yardstick to measure repression with! So overtly homosexual that he probably had a "remember stonewall" poster on his wall at uni! So emotionally damaged that he probably can't be given back to the store for a refund!

And now he had him pinned. What fun! Like keeping a pair of praying mantises in a jar! 

Words no longer matter. What matters is action. The game has been initiated, and now all they have to do is play.

Moriarty doesn't remember what words he used, but he remembers telling Sherlock that he could very well kill him, and that he knew all of his secrets, and that there was no way out for Sherlock, at all.

Sherlock had gone still, and Moriarty had used that time to kiss Sherlock. A mild act of degradation, a calculated move designed to break the opponent. A reminder of everything Sherlock hated: sexuality and loss of power and dehumanization and evil.

It worked. Of course it did. Sherlock hated being human, so what would be better than to remind him of that?

Sherlock was too broken down to resist, too beaten by every single failure that Moriarty had welded into him, too far gone to do anything but cry. Sherlock looked like something beautiful and tragic, up here, with the wind ruffling his hair and coat and the sky accentuating his eyes

This was not love - it was something _so much more_.

"Kill me," Sherlock said, finally. "Finish what you started." Like giving up. 

Moriarty snapped his fingers, and Sherlock's body filled with lead.

Moriarty is never seen again.

***

Mary and Sherlock never really got along. Say what you will about Sherlock's profession and the violence inherent in the system, but it's objectively not a good idea to trust people that try to murder you, and, in general, the better their reasons are for doing something monstrous, the less you should trust them. If they can justify their atrocities, then they can justify their atrocities.

Mary had very good reasons, and Sherlock spent as much of his time as possible with John and not Mary, and that just won't do, now, will it?

Of course, to get rid of him, she'd have to change her disguise, but taking out Sherlock is well worth the cost.

They never find his body, and they never find her.

  
**III. The Fire Sermon**

  
Sherlock had intended for his goodbye to be a confession, until... something happened. Something that Sherlock is not going to think about, because, no matter what, Sherlock Holmes is absolutely not a coward. Definitely. It was a slip of the tongue, not fear.

Fucking hell, he thinks. Sherlock isn't a fucking girl's name. It's a surname that's metastasized.

He stepped onto the plane. It was gilt and silent and still, a steel bird, caged by nothing but its own lack of will.

He curls into a ball and closes his eyes tight.

When he gets a call from Mycroft about Moriarty, he throws his phone on the floor and shatters it.

End this. Cut this out, make a clean break. You can't come back, anymore. There isn't a place for you. There wasn't ever one, anywhere. You were born on the wrong planet. Maybe you shouldn't have been born at all, and this is just you making peace with everything you deserve, paying penace. 

He survives Eastern Europe about as long as one can expect.

***

John is consciously aware that staying with Sherlock is a terrible idea, but it doesn't fully register until Sherlock sends him into a mysterious government conspiracy laboratory with the intent of scaring him just for a case.

When they get home, John starts to pack his bags.

Sherlock stands in the doorway and asks, "Why?"

Breathe in, out, stop.

Self-control is empathy with your future self.

"I'm sorry, but... I can't take this, anymore."

John doesn't let himself look at Sherlock's face after he says that, because he knows that he's not the first to say that to him, but that he's almost certainly the last.

***

John had planned this. He trusted Sherlock, so he kept to the plan.

John told Sherlock that he was bisexual on his stag night, hushed whispers in dingy fluorescent lights, promises traded.

Sherlock doesn't take it the way he hoped or expected him to.

"But Mary," Sherlock says. As if it mattered, right now. Fuck, as if it mattered at all. This was about  _them._

"I... this isn't about her."

What is Sherlock _doing?_ "I hope you have the most wonderful of marriages, John, but you really should be on your way home-"

Sherlock ushers John out the door, despite confused protests from John, and John was left standing in the rain and trying the doorbell for at least five minutes.

Sherlock kept his distance, after that. They still talked, but their interactions were sterile, clean, detached, as if Sherlock was trying to avoid infecting a wound.

It took John years to figure out just what Sherlock was trying to protect him from, and, by that time, it was already far, far too late.

***

The thing about Mary was that she had been many people in many lifetimes. Not a chameleon; chameleons keep their basic shape. No, Mary was both the clay and the sculptor, her own personal Michelangelo, and she knew how to _shoot_.

When she takes aim at Sherlock, she does not miss.

The paramedics are too late. The police aren't. 

The damning piece of evidence is a testimony from John. Mycroft sends her to prison for a very, very long time.

She has the baby in prison, and John gets custody.

He names her Willa. Willa Rosamund Watson, and John is a wonderful father. A small mercy, at least.

***

John hit him.

This, in itself, was not a surprise. John was a man that expressed his anger through violence, and Sherlock was a man that was prone to being obnoxious. This had happened before, and would happen again.

The difference, this time, was the scale, and the ring. John's wedding ring, actually. 

Sherlock's cheek was bleeding, bright red drip-drip-dripping, and John staggered back and _I never meant for this-_

They made eye contact, and John felt like he was being cut open and probed.

"Keep going," Sherlock said.

"What?"

"Keep going. Finish what you started. I deserve it, and you know it, and they wouldn't press charges."

It took John a second to figure out exactly what the hell Sherlock was saying.

His reaction was to leave. He wasn't safe, anymore. 

  
**IV. Death By Water**

  
John knew that he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he joined the military, but he didn't quite realize just how right he was until he got to Afghanistan and the sand swallowed him whole.

He dies in February of 2008. Shot strayed a little to the left of the shoulder, and he can't save himself, and he's not sure he would if he could. 

It is  _agonizing,_ and John dies alone. 

***

The first time that Sherlock overdosed, it was deliberate.

Mycroft found him, trying to die, lying in a pool of his own piss and vomit. Something regal and noble, reduced to lying in its own filth in search of _distraction_. 

Sherlock was shunted through the hospital, then rehab, and came out crisp and clean and uniform, like a coat through the dry cleaners. Fixed. Okay. Uniform. 

Better.

Which was why he lets himself have just the tiniest amount of cocaine after John's wedding - he's been good and clean and just like Mycroft wants, and god  _damn_  him and everything about him, because Sherlock will not be abandoned again without the help of drugs.

He miscalculates - just a bit too much, and he is found in the very same position he was a decade ago.

They're too late. (One could make an argument that "they" could've been considered too late by the first time Sherlock caught self-mutilating, but that is neither here nor there.) 

John cries at the funeral.

***

It's amazing how much damage can be done by two suicidal people locked in the same box, a box filled with guns and syringes and knives and pain and memories that nobody wants anymore.

This time, there were no words spoken. There was no silence, either, because silence implies that there was something, that there is existence with no noise. This was a vacuum, a breath before an apology, a "so it goes". Air filled with nothing, suffocating and plastic. Pose and smile.

It didn't take as long as some like to think, either. (Mycroft insisted to himself for years, decades later, that Sherlock must've put up a great fight, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary.) 

They looked at each other, John's head tilted up, questioning, looking for a comfort he knew he wouldn't find, Sherlock lowering himself from the safety of his ivory tower, like a fallen angel, a seraphim. 

"We can't keep doing this," one said. "We're destroying ourselves."

"Who'll take care of Rosie?"

"We've made arrangements, and she won't remember us, anyway."

"This is wrong."

"So are we. So is this."

They stared at each other with eyes like glass.

Which was how the two of them ended up in front of Sherlock's bathtub as John got as much water on the floor as possible and Sherlock worked at scratching the coating off the outlet wires. 

They work, until one of them interrupts. Cold feet, hot head, broken heart. 

"We can fix this. We still have - "

"No, we don't. We've got nothing."

A pause, then he continues.

"I think that if we were salvageable, we would've done that sooner."

Eye contact like parabolas, floating, screening. They were about to burn something big, and they didn't quite understand the scale of what they were about to do because that would be impossible. Destruction is infinitely easier than creation, and they are destroying something infinite. 

"You know how they say that this too will pass?"

"What about it?"

"We're ready."

Their eyes were stuck and they couldn't look away. Like a plane crash. Like watching a flash flood and wondering how signs stayed up. Something cataclysmic, a tragedy in slow motion.

"I love you."

"I..." he had never been the most eloquent. Feelings weren't his style. Then again, they were British men, and... "Me too."

"We don't have to do this."

"Yes, we do, and you know it and you know why."

They took off their shoes and held hands and Sherlock's hand twitched around the wire, close but not touching, and John was trying to split the distance between staring at Sherlock and closing his eyes.

"People might talk."

"They do little else."

"Except when they need to." This was his last try. After this, he was done. No point in trying to stave off the... 

"Too late, now."

"Why?"

"We've lost hope."

John looked down and closed his eyes. 

Sherlock's fingers closed around the wire.

The power for the entire building went out.

Someone screamed.

***

John walked out onto the pool deck with a bomb strapped to his chest, and Sherlock could feel the entire world ending. He swore the stars stopped, for just a moment.

His mind raced ahead of his body, spinning off its tracks, trying to pin down every single possible combination, every single way that this situation could possibly end.

None of them - none.

Well, denial and anger were out, so...

"Moriarty, give us five minutes. Five."

"Then what? Then you arrest me? Enough time for you to call your copper friends-"

"After that, you can destroy us, if you promise to leave the rest of the city alone."

Moriarty pauses before he nods. "You have my word." Honor between thieves - Moriarty won't break his promise. His pride's at stake. This is what he wanted, all along.

Sherlock unstraps the bombs from John as if he's had practice and throws them in the water, then grabs John by the shoulders, hand gentle on the weak one, but strong on his good one, and their eyes meet.

"We're going to die here," John says, and Sherlock knows that he means so, so much more that just that.

 _We've run out of time, finally,_ maybe, or possibly _why did we waste so much time doubting_  or _people will talk and I don't care anymore and I shouldn't have wasted time caring in the first place, goddamn us._

No time to think, anymore.

Sherlock kisses him. John kisses back. Small and chaste and melancholy, like the stars.

It ends. It's too short and too long, and they need more time for that one kiss and more time together for the rest of their lives, and this should not mean as much to them as it does.

"Yes we are," Sherlock says.

And there is nothing else worth saying and no time left to say them and no language that can reach, so they go back to kissing, filling up the rest of their time with love.

They don't see their deaths coming. It was a mercy, the only one that the universe would grant them. They would die before they were broken, once.

It's more than they asked for, and more than most get. They bypass depression and acceptance just like that.

***

John made a promise to himself, after the mess that used to be his shoulder healed, after he was back in a home that he didn't belong, after he knew that if he wanted to pretend to reintegrate, he'd have to let a part of him die, a little: that he would never, ever shoot a gun again, no matter the cost.

John realized how stupid that promise was when he saw Sherlock's face, saw the danger that folded itself into every single one of Sherlock's movements, mannerisms, smiles.

John knew that he'd be breaking a lot of promises for him, and he's almost excited. If this man can make me want to fight again, then, maybe -

He doesn't let himself finish the thought. Hope is terrifying. Not knowing is makes him like to be alive again.

Until he's trying to aim from an adjacent building at a cabbie, and his hands are _shaking_  and he _can't fucking aim_  and _fucking PTSD is finding another way to ruin his life-_

And he misses, and Sherlock takes the pill, then sways and falls to the floor.

John doesn't let himself hope, after that. Too dangerous.

***

Sherlock comes back from Reichenbach and finds John. 

John is proposing to his girlfriend. His girlfriend is saying yes. 

Two years, Sherlock thinks. I was gone for two years. I know that that's a long time, but it isn't _that_  long. I didn't talk until I was four. 

There are two possible paths to this. 

One: Sherlock walks up to John, and Sherlock is no longer important. Maybe he never was - maybe he was a flatmate with an interesting habit. Maybe John's forgotten him. Either way, John says he doesn't know Sherlock in order to save face. 

Two: John is angry. (John has every right to be angry, and Sherlock is deserving of punishment under most moral systems devised, but that doesn't make pain what Sherlock wants or needs right now. He's had enough of pain for a lifetime.) 

Sherlock leaves the restaurant. John learns that Sherlock returns on his weekly perusal of the Science of Deduction. 

John waits for Sherlock to come back for years. 

 

**V. What the Thunder Said**

  
He knocked on the door.

Molly answered, swaddling a little bundle of clothes.

"I... I was wondering if there was anything at all I could do to help."

Please, he wants to say. I have nowhere else to go but here. Please let me in. I need to help you more than I need to breathe, John.

You know that, by now. You know. We have both died and left a thousand times. Please. This one time. We can make this work. Please. Please.

"He... he said that he wanted to talk to you, when you came. I'll go get him."

The door clicked softly behind her, and Sherlock closed his eyes and started counting. Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, nineteen, twenty-three -

John opened the door. Tired - stressed - sad - recently crying - conflicted, flashing across his body. Sherlock knows. He knows.

He closes his eyes. The words don't go away, stuck, and Sherlock cannot silence his _goddamn_ mind even if he tries.

He wants it to stop so, so badly. 

"Sherlock, I..."

They are standing in a doorway, the frame separating them, and Sherlock can tell that John wouldn't meet his eyes if he let him.

"Sherlock, it's for Rosie's sake. I... I can't let myself keep doing this. She..." His words trail off like they've been murdered, like their guts are trailing off behind them after a failed harakiri and now death is long and slow and dragged-out and dishonorable.

Sherlock does not react. Sherlock does not open his eyes. Sherlock does not answer. Like a statue, or denial. 

John does not move.

The door clicks shut, after a while, and only then does Sherlock allow himself to go home and cry.

***

On this occasion, John is sane. This is not normal, and it may never happen again. Watch close.

Mike Stamford said that this man needed a flatmate. He did not tell John his name, which was an immediate red flag. This man is also choosing to avoid making eye contact with John, and John does not think he could handle dealing with someone that is not stable and neurotypical and _normal_  right now, because he is considering killing himself, the same way that one considers moving, or changing one's haircut, and he is _terrified_. He can barely handle his own shit, let alone the shit of someone whose mind worked twice as fast. 

When Sherlock explains John's entire life story, John is impressed. John wants to say this. John wants to see more, because this man is _fascinating_.

John does not. John knows that this man is going to destroy him, knows that this is a terrible idea, knows that if he gives into the black hole that is the mind of Sherlock Holmes, he will never be able to drag himself into...

Into whatever he thinks he wants. 

So, he says, "Sod off."

It physically pains him to watch Sherlock pretend not to be insulted by John.

John does not think about Sherlock until his name shows up in the obituaries - another suicide. 

It almost isn't news. 

***

The scary part, Sherlock thinks, isn't that crazy things are happening. Crazy things are fine. Crazy things are normal. Hell, Sherlock solved a case once because he tapped the pavement with a stick to check for a hollow sound. Crazy is the new sexy. 

Because crazy operates on its own internal logic. Crazy isn't disordered - it's a different type of order. An alien one, but still structures against chaos. They still made sense, and Sherlock could find it. It was his  _job._

No, the scary bit is that the things that are causing the crazy things are utterly nonsensical. 

Moriarty died. Sherlock knows this. Moriarty died, and Sherlock checked the body for a pulse. So did Mary. Sherlock even held her as she died, got to feel the last breath puff out like a little dandelion. 

And that's just the big things - he has a  _sister?_ And why didn't John stay to protect Soo Lin Yao? And why was John so inconsistent? 

That's when Sherlock stops trusting his own mind, his own perception. He feels like he's gaslighting himself, like he's drunk and blacking out and doesn't know when. Like the world is playing an elaborate prank, and he's the target. 

But, really - you  _did_ deserve it, when John attacked you, and Moriarty wasn't dead, he was just dead to  _you-_

Sherlock lives, but as a shell. Sure, it looks fine, but there's nothing underneath, and when someone presses, he crumbles like dust. 

Sherlock gets another flatmate, later. His name is Jim.

**Author's Note:**

> This will very likely be edited/get more parts. 
> 
>  
> 
> Concrit is welcomed!


End file.
